These migrants arrive with complex asylum claims and, because of bureaucratic and diplomatic obstacles, are among the most difficult to deport when they don’t qualify for protection. Many are released into the United States with a pending court date that may be years away.

Some migrants say they could be killed if sent home. Many risked their lives crossing oceans or jungles to reach the border in search of a better life. The legal basis for an asylum claim is a flight from persecution, not a yearning for American prosperity.

Immigration judges are churning out decisions at a record clip. Still, decisions about sensitive cases involving violence and persecution tend to take years. That means many of the new immigrants are living in a state of long-term limbo, even as they become more enmeshed in the fabric of American life.

Economists say the migrants have helped America’s post-covid economy to be one of the strongest in the world. But the United States remains tangled in a bitter debate over the costs and benefits of these new arrivals, which has been amplified by this year’s presidential campaign.

Biden tightened border restrictions to curb asylum claims after former president and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump rallied Republicans to defeat a bipartisan bill that would have expanded immigration enforcement. Trump blames Biden for inviting mass migration, and he is pledging to close the border and deploy U.S. troops to carry out deportations if he’s elected in November.

Where people have settled

Unlike the immigrants of the late 1800s and early 1900s who arrived at Ellis Island on transatlantic steam ships, the journey today often unfolds in two phases. One is the physical challenge of reaching U.S. territory. A second, longer odyssey follows in the U.S. immigration court system, which must sort out who is allowed to stay.

The Post’s analysis of U.S. immigration court data shows that about 3 million migrants who have arrived since 2014 have active cases. More than three in five have entered the United States since 2021, the year Biden took office.

Their legal status in America remains unresolved, but they are already building lives: many are taking low-wage jobs, sending children to school and relocating to communities across the United States that have not been traditional immigrant destinations.

Court filings show the newest immigrants are settling across rural and urban America. They and other arrivals have pushed the share of the U.S. population that is foreign-born to nearly 14 percent, the highest in more than a century. New immigrant hubs have formed around jobs in meatpacking, agriculture and petroleum.

Some of the biggest growth areas are in Florida and Texas, where the immigrant population continues to expand thanks to plentiful jobs and cheaper housing — and despite immigration crackdowns by Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott.

The growth is uneven. West Virginia, Wyoming and North Dakota — states with severe labor shortages — attracted hardly any of the newcomers, while New York, Chicago and Denver have received thousands as Abbott has bused more from the border to those cities. California, a traditional destination, is also home to large numbers of new arrivals.

Immigrant hubs by nationality

Migrants have long chosen to settle with family and friends in the United States. Some arrive with a relative’s phone number scrawled on their hands. Many newer arrivals have few contacts, however, and end up in city shelters.

A map showing immigrant hubs by nationality

Guatemalans and Hondurans have been crossing the U.S. southern border for many years, fleeing violence, drought and hunger. Like the Mexican immigrants facing deportation, they are widely distributed across urban and rural areas, with fast-growing communities in western and southern U.S. states.

Maps showing immigration court population by country of origin since 2014

Venezuelans became a top group entering the United States for the first time under the Biden administration, a surge that has demonstrated how rapidly migration can change. New enclaves of Venezuelan migrants have formed in places such as Salt Lake City, Denver and Dallas. If Maduro extends his rule during next month’s election, he could trigger another mass exodus.

Migration from El Salvador has fallen in recent years under President Nayib Bukele, who has generated both accolades and criticism for an iron-fisted anti-gang campaign. El Salvador has gone from one of Latin America’s most dangerous countries to one of its safest, and far fewer Salvadorans are leaving.

Maps showing immigration court population by country of origin since 2014

Cuban migration to the United States has been at record levels due to the country’s tanking economy and long-standing U.S. penalties that tightened under Trump. Cubans enjoy special privileges under U.S. law, and roughly five percent of the island’s population has crossed into the United States since 2021. Louisville, Las Vegas and Houston are new destinations for Cubans, court filings show.

Turmoil in Haiti has sent more people fleeing — and made U.S. deportations to Haiti more controversial. Many of the Haitians who have surged to the United States have arrived from Chile or other South American nations where they found refuge after Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake. They risk deportation to a place they left years ago. Haitian communities in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Florida have expanded in recent years, the data show.

Immigration court cases have jumped for other Latin American nations, including Colombians, Brazilians, Peruvians and Ecuadorians, the latter fleeing new waves of drug-fueled gang violence. Those groups are concentrating in New York, Florida and the Midwest.

During the past two years, U.S. border authorities have apprehended more migrants from Africa and Asia than ever before. Guided by smuggling organizations, these groups often arrive to South America then head north to follow the dangerous Darién Gap jungle route between Colombia and Panama, eventually reaching the U.S.-Mexico border.

About 50,000 Chinese migrants have crossed into the United States along the Mexico border since 2023. Court data show many of the most recent migrants are settling in Queens or Los Angeles’s Monterey Park area. Migrants from India are streaming to California. Russians, many of whom say they’re fleeing the war on Ukraine and forced conscription, are going to New York, Sacramento and Los Angeles.

Fifty years ago, the average American household spent more on clothing than health care, and putting food on the table cost about as much as keeping a roof overhead. Since then, technological advances, globalization and housing shortages have radically reshaped how Americans spend their dollars.

Health-care, housing and education expenses have increased since 1972, while money spent on food, clothing and transportation has declined, according to a Washington Post analysis of Consumer Expenditure Survey data.

A line chart showing what share of household spending has gone to different categories since 1972. Food, housing, and transportation accounted for nearly the same share of spending in 1972, but the share going to housing has been rising while the share going to food has been shrinking.

The typical American household has also changed. Families have fewer children, and young people are slower to create their own households. More people have college degrees, and retirees make up a swelling share of the population.

Some of the biggest shifts in day-to-day life have left their fingerprints in spending. Home computers and internet access were practically nonexistent in 1984 and now make up 2 percent of household expenses. And tobacco spending has declined sharply since 1972, when it took up more of the average budget than fresh fruits and vegetables.

But other lifestyle changes barely register.

Restaurant food has made up a remarkably steady share of Americans’ pocketbooks in the last 50 years, as has entertainment, which includes tickets to shows, audiovisual equipment, pets, hobbies and more. Spending on telephones, including cellphones, has been consistent since 1984, the first year with detailed data on phones.

Photographs of telephones at different points in time between 1972 and 2022

What Americans buy within those categories, however, has evolved. Cellphones and data plans have replaced landlines and expensive phone bills. Restaurant spending moved away from lunches toward dinners, especially after 2020.

In contrast, the share of money going toward essentials like food, housing and medical care has dramatically changed.

The biggest shift has been in housing. At its low in 1984, 19 percent of a household’s budget went to housing costs. Today, it’s 27 percent.

Photos of houses and condos at different times between 1972 and 2022.

The drastic rise stems from a decades-long housing shortage fueled by the increasing cost of building new homes, according to Laurie Goodman, an institute fellow at Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center.

“Every aspect of [home building] has way outpaced inflation, from labor costs to land costs, which goes back to zoning, to building costs, which go back to building codes,” says Goodman.

Renters and homeowners both felt these rising costs from 1984 to the mid-2000s. After the Great Recession, though, rent expenses continued going up while the cost of homeownership dropped.

While interest rates are high now, they’ve generally been low since 2000. That’s benefited homeowners, who can lock in a rate when they purchase or refinance to lower rates. Renters, on the other hand, are subject to new market rates every time they renew or start a lease.

Food has had the opposite trajectory since 1972. It’s gone from 20 percent of household spending to 14 percent over the past half-century, mostly in lower grocery bills. Much of that drop comes from higher efficiency farming. Farms in 2022 were twice as productive as they were in the 1970s.

“What we see in America pretty early on is a technological bias in favor of capital and equipment,” says Peter Coclanis, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “which raised the efficiency of American agriculture. And some of this efficiency gain translated into cheaper food costs.”

Photographs of people buying and delivering food at different points in time between 1972 and 2022

And while food prices have rapidly risen in the last few years, Americans still put less of their money toward food than people in any other wealthy nation. For instance, spending on groceries in France takes up twice as much of household spending than in the United States.

“We have, in a relative sense, the cheapest food in the world,” says Coclanis.

Changes in taste have also played a role. Today’s typical American household spends drastically less on meat, especially beef, and more on produce and prepared food.

Prepared foods, snacks, condiments and seasonings — categorized as “miscellaneous” — take up nearly three times the share of supermarket bills as they did in 1972, with prepared foods accounting for most of that increase.

Technological advances helped drive down food expenses, but had the opposite effect for health care. More medical knowledge often translates to more medical care.

“We’re healthier than we were decades ago,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president of health policy at KFF, a nonprofit health policy and research organization. “But the increases in health spending have been wildly out of whack with improvements to health.”

Photographs of healthcare settings between 1972 and 2022

Other wealthy nations where governments step in to keep health-care costs down have achieved similar or better improvements at far lower costs, according to Levitt. Health spending per capita in the United States is nearly double the average of other wealthy nations.

Health-care costs have also grown because of consolidation, creating an industry dominated by large providers, less competition and higher prices. Researchers estimate that hospital mergers alone accounted for over a billion-dollar increase in private health-care spending between 2010 and 2015.

In contrast to medical services and housing construction, products like clothing and vehicles can be made en masse in countries with lower labor costs and shipped to American consumers.

In 1972, the vast majority of clothing was made in the United States. Fifty years later, that share was 3 percent. Free trade agreements and the declining power of organized labor in the United States helped companies move manufacturing overseas, which reduced the prices of many consumer goods.

Photographs of people shopping at different points in time between 1972 and 2022.

And even though Americans spend far less on clothing today, they’re buying five times as much as they did in the 1980s. A similar pattern holds in transportation: American households are more likely to have multiple cars today, but vehicles take up less of their budget.

The Consumer Expenditure Survey doesn’t provide a complete view of American budgets. Most kinds of savings and investments aren’t included. It counts the full cost of big-ticket items, like cars or college tuition, at time of purchase, rather than in loan payments over time. Still, the data provides an unparalleled view into American spending habits over the last half-century.

In the near term, experts believe health care, which to tends to lag inflation, is expected to continue taking up a greater share of pocketbooks. And experts say cost savings in overseas manufacturing will probably temper, preventing further falls in the prices of many consumer goods.

Some long-run changes in consumer spending are predictable: nearly 1 in 4 Americans will be 65 or older by 2050, probably continuing the rise in health-care expenses. Others are unforeseeable: Five years ago, no one would have predicted the pandemic spike in pet spending. In another 50 years, perhaps transportation dollars will finally go to flying cars.